114 



THE HALF-CASTE. 



African tribes, especially the agricultural, where 

 women are the workers. The same may be ob- 

 served in parts of North Britain and of northern 

 Europe. The difference in this matter between 

 the Teutonic and the Latin races never struck 

 me so strongly as when seeing German families 

 land at Bio de Janeiro. 



The half-caste Zanzibar girl enviously eyes 

 the Arab woman, a heap of unwashed cottons on 

 invisible feet, with the Maskat masque exposing 

 only her unrecognizable eyeballs. The former 

 wears a single loose piece of red silk or che- 

 quered cotton. Her frizzly hair is twisted into 

 pigtails ; her eyelids are stained black ; her eye- 

 brows are lengthened with paint; her ear-rims 

 are riddled with a dozen holes to admit rings, 

 wooden buttons, or metal studs, whilst the slit 

 lobes, distended by elastic twists of coloured 

 palm-leaf, whose continual expansion prodigi- 

 ously enlarges the aperture, are fitted with a 

 painted disk, an inch and a half in diameter. 

 The same device was practised (according to the 

 missionary Gumilla) by the Aberne tribe of the 

 Orinoco. If pretty, and therefore wealthy, she 

 wears heavy silver earrings run through the shell 

 of the ear ; her thumbs have similar decorations, 

 and massive bangles of white metal adorn, like 



